Essad Bey Tom Reiss

Essad Bey, the sickly son of an oil millionaire from Baku, Azerbaijan, receives permission from his father to spend the summer with his milk brother that is, with whom he was nursed by the same Caucasian nanny Ali Khan, passing the holiday in his home village in the wild Caucasus So the two set out, under the custody of a wise attendant, into an archaic world in whic Essad Bey, the sickly son of an oil millionaire from Baku, Azerbaijan, receives permission from his father to spend the summer with his milk brother that is, with whom he was nursed by the same Caucasian nanny Ali Khan, passing the holiday in his home village in the wild Caucasus So the two set out, under the custody of a wise attendant, into an archaic world in which chivalry counted than buying power and poets were highly regarded than princes into a country in which, as a kind of curiosity shop of world history, all that is outlived and forgotten was loyally preserved This is Essad Bey s second book, which was first published in English in 1931 In it the author draws upon his Oriental imaginative powers, conjuring a vast panorama of the Caucasus, its people and customs The result is a fresh and densely atmospheric work, even if not always laying claim to scientific accuracy Often adding a touch of imagination, the author succeeds in bringing the heart and soul of this archaic world to life, which he had himself experienced and learned to love as a child.

Recent Comments "Twelve Secrets in the Caucasus"

If you have wanted to pull a book off a shelf and find a perfect gem that no one has ever heard of and that held an amazing amount of totally arcane stuff and was also a good read then find this book. No isbn, No copy write, Everybody read it when it came out and it was forgotten.

One result of these migrations has been the remarkable fact that some of Caucasian languages which are no longer to be found in the mountains are spoken far away in the plains of Syria and in the mountains of Lebanon by successors of the emigrants. The Caucasus has been transplanted into Syria. The knights fight with their neighbours there, undertake thieving expeditions, remain true to the laws of their Caucasian fathers and the eternal custom of the blood feud. The homeland of the Caucasus sti [...]